MS making significant investments, financial backing to go all-in on gaming

[Parallax Scroll]

https://www.thurrott.com/xbox/157090/xbox-after-the-x

Xbox, After the X

Posted on April 23, 2018 by Brad Sams

When Microsoft announced the Xbox One X last year at E3, many began wondering aloud if this would be the last console we would see from Microsoft. Considering that console cycles span upwards of seven years, the idea that cloud-streaming gaming would become a reality before the next refresh cycle seemed like a viable plausibility.

But it does not look like that will be the case here, or if the company does move towards streaming games, there will still be a dedicated hardware component for the Xbox platform. Following my podcast last week, I have heard from three different sources stating that Microsoft is pushing forward with new hardware but that the release timeline is still several years away.

The company is looking to hire a specialist with GDDR6 expertise and they are also exploring how to deeply integrate game streaming into their next console.

While we might think of game streaming as meaning that the entire game is streamed in real-time from a cloud server, there are more realistic possibilities in the near-term while the latency challenge is overcome. For example, imagine a game where the environment is dynamically updated from the cloud as you explore the map so that it becomes never-ending or have a city that is updated dynamically with local weather and traffic so that you can experience traffic jams in the virtual world as they occur in real life…exciting.

But, these are the scenarios that are being explored as it will be unlikely that a switch is flipped to a fully-streaming service as there are still too many variables still in place and the ability for local gaming still needs to be a viable option for the long-term.

As for the timeline for the next console release, I’ve heard that within three years is a realistic possibility; the company is not currently in a rush to replace the Xbox One X as it has a significant horsepower advantage when compared to the current offering from Sony. And as you would expect, the console will be backward and forwards compatible, much like the Xbox One X; Paul is also hearing that Microsoft is building another iteration of the Xbox as well.

Even though Microsoft is pushing more towards the enterprise with its Windows and Office services, Xbox is one of the few brands inside of Microsoft that has managed to create a huge consumer-following and has a large upside ahead of it as gaming, and eSports, continue to grow. The company has also recently announced that it is expanding its E3 presence that further shows that Microsoft is not shying away from gaming.

 

 

It's going to take time to rebuild Microsoft first party studios and create killer launch titles for the next Xbox. Fable 4 is no doubt one such example.

Still, I'm glad Microsoft are making these commitments.

[spacecadet]

That article doesn't sound like they're doing much beyond the standard R&D that all companies do before launching a new console, in terms of considering new features that might differentiate it from the competition. I don't see anything about upgrading their first-party game offerings, and the article specifically says they're "not currently in a rush" to replace the Xbox One X.

 

Read between the lines here and it sounds like the story is really that MS is in the *initial* stages of planning a replacement for the Xbox One. Which is... a little weird. They're going to be even further behind.

 

I think it's silly if people really thought the Xbox One would be MS's last game console. What did they think, we'd all switch to "cloud gaming" (whatever that actually means) on PC? PC gaming is big business already but it's not going to suddenly explode much beyond where it is now; certainly not to the point of making up for lost console sales. *Not* producing a separate game console is just leaving money on the table, because some PC gamers would buy it anyway, plus a lot of more casual gamers. There's always going to need to be a separate, simple box dedicated to gaming that consumers can have hooked up to their living room TV's. It can't be more complex for most people than hooking up a video cable, plugging in a power cord and hitting the power button.

 

And further, that little dedicated gaming box is going to need to be updated periodically, because this isn't a vacuum and every game console competes against both each other and PC's.

 

So either MS basically quits the video game business, or they make another Xbox at some point. This is the way the industry's always been. People have been saying "we have PC's, we don't need consoles anymore, and consoles are like PC's now anyway" since around 1980.

 

I'm going off on a tangent a little bit, but my basic point is that consoles are not going anywhere, and MS making another one doesn't mean they're "all in" IMO, it just means they're not quitting the business.

[Keatah]

I love watching and reading about those attempts at "streaming" and forcing you to do everything online. HAhahhaaa! It'll never happen with the big telecoms restricting bandwidth for all but the most expensive packages. Great to see the industry sit on its own fat-ass and choke itself.

 

Additionally I don't think I have any desire to "..imagine a game where the environment is dynamically updated from the cloud as you explore the map so that it becomes never-ending or have a city that is updated dynamically with local weather and traffic so that you can experience traffic jams in the virtual world as they occur in real life…exciting." So..no..

[Parallax Scroll]

I think there's at least 2, maybe 3 more traditional console cycles/generations yet to come, where processing is still local to the system in your home, and that still use physical media, be it optical discs or something else.

 

Neither will disappear in the 2020s.

Edited April 24, 2018 by Parallax Scroll

[MrMaddog]

Sounds like the next Xbox console will have better graphics than the X 1 X but still play existing Xbox games. They're trying to be more like upgradable PC's here...